careful little lion man
by bravemccalll
Summary: "Hey, Hajime, I have another case for you." - also known as the one where Mukuro is an ex-veteran turned waitress and mechanic, Fuyuhiko is hopelessly in love with Peko, and Peko is just trying to keep her business running. Pushing Daisies AU. Sequel to you make a fool of death with your beauty
1. Chapter 1

chapter one – i've missed you, darling

Fuyuhiko thinks that despite everything, he's coping quite well.

He gets up every day and goes to work in his office that is close enough to the Pie Hole that he can walk there, he takes on new cases, he asks for help from Hajime.

But things are definitely different. He feels it in chest.

Then again, that might just be the bullet stuck in his heart, so he doesn't really know.

(There's a scar on his chest, you know. Peko traces it sometimes in the middle of the night.

His chest hurts when she does this, but not because of the wound.)

/

Mukuro Ikusaba looks better than she did when she essentially lived in the sewers. Her hair has been washed and it falls straight down to her shoulders. Her face isn't covered in dirt and filth and now you can see the light dashing of freckles that dot her nose and cheeks.

Currently, she's sleeping on Kazuichi's sofa.

"I live in fear, bro," Kazuichi whines during one of his breaks. "I think she's going to kill me!"

Fuyuhiko snorts while Hajime frowns. "Why do you think that, Kaz?"

"She's always glaring at me, man! She looks _murderous,_ " Kazuichi says.

"I didn't know that you knew such long words," Fuyuhiko gasps. Hajime grins while Kazuichi makes a face. "Besides, she won't kill you in your home."

Kazuichi looks suspicious. "Why?"

"Because it'd be easier to kill you at work. All that heavy machinery. And she has access to all of it because you gave her a job helping you out." Fuyuhiko pops a slice of apple into his mouth and checks his watch. "Oh, look at that. Your break's over. Back on the clock!" Fuyuhiko smiles cheerily at him.

Kazuichi stares at him with a pale face and stumbles out of The Pie Hole on shaky legs.

Fuyuhiko turns to see Hajime rolling his eyes at him. "If he fires her then that's on you, you know that right?"

He shrugs. "She'll still have a job waitressing here. Besides, Kaz won't fire her because he needs to live with her. He won't want to induce her wrath."

Hajime chuckles and starts wiping down the counter. He glances up at him, almost worriedly. "You don't mind her working here, do you?"

Fuyuhiko shakes his head. "Nah." And he means it to. He knows that Mukuro didn't mean to pull the trigger, that it'd been her hand clenching because of the pain that had spread through her back.

Besides, it was hard to hold a grudge against her. A few days after Hajime had brought her back, she had started her first day working at The Pie Hole. Fuyuhiko had come in to see Peko and she had marched up to him as though he was her mission.

"I'm sorry," she'd half-shouted and Fuyuhiko had only not jumped because of years of controlling his reactions. "I can only apologise for any pain I have caused you. If there is anything I can do to make this right, then I will do it!"

Then she had stood in front of him, gazing at him expectantly but without making any eye contact.

"It's – alright," Fuyuhiko had said eventually. "Don't sweat it." He had seen Peko peering out of her office with her face carefully blank. Fuyuhiko had stared at Mukuro for a moment. Her hands were clenched around a notebook with _Just Keep Swimming!_ printed on the front of it in gold. She'd looked scared, Fuyuhiko had thought. As though everything she'd thought that she could rely on had crumpled around her.

Fuyuhiko knew exactly what that felt like.

"I'm…I'm sorry about your sister. Sorry she didn't have your back," he'd said before he could stop himself. Mukuro had blinked at him with dark eyes before she'd nodded and scurried into the back to talk to Hajime about something.

(Sometimes he wonders if this is what his own sister is like. But then he thinks he's just projecting.)

"Peko doesn't like her," Fuyuhiko says.

Hajime nods. "Yeah, I know. I had to argue with her for days until she let Mukuro work here."

"Yeah, she told me about it," Fuyuhiko says.

"I mean, I get why she doesn't like her. She did technically kill you. It's hard to forgive those who hurt the people you care about." Hajime frowns down at the counter and Fuyuhiko wonders who he's thinking about.

He settles on humming in agreement and they sit in silence for a while.

/

Here's the thing: Fuyuhiko doesn't really buy into the whole 'friendship saves the world' trope or even the whole friendship thing anyway. But he thinks that if anyone was his friend then he supposes he'd pick Hajime.

Besides, being able to say that he has a friend that can raise the dead is pretty cool he guesses.

(He had a friend once, when he younger. Back when his mother was alive and his father was someone that he thought he could trust whole-heartedly.

His friend is gone now but sometimes Hajime smiles and Fuyuhiko thinks that he can see him still.

But he's probably just projecting again, so he ignores it.)

/

"We're starting a new club," Chiaki announces one day.

"Another one?" Fuyuhiko groans.

"There's already a club?" Mukuro asks, quietly.

Watson barks softly and Mukuro lifts a slow hand and pets her. Watson looks happy.

All four of them are crammed into a booth an hour before The Pie Hole closes. Fuyuhiko wonders if Mukuro is meant to be working or not but decides that Peko is better suited to reinforcing such things.

"Yes, we have the Solving Murders Club," Chiaki explains. "We have jackets. I'll order you one."

Mukuro blinks at her. "…Thank you…"

"Not a great gift, you don't need to thank her," Fuyuhiko says and gets elbowed in the ribs by Chiaki.

"Anyway, this club is just for us. It's called Dealing With The Fact That We Were Dead But Now Aren't Thanks To Hajime." Fuyuhiko and Mukuro stare at her. "The Club," she adds. Fuyuhiko snorts.

"Are we getting jackets for this club as well?" Mukuro asks. Everything she says, she says quietly Fuyuhiko notices. He's also noticed that most of the time she will say nothing at all. She seems to like Chiaki though and he gets why. Chiaki is too lovely to most people for them to _not_ like her.

"Nope," Chiaki beams. "I was thinking pins."

"Quite a lot to put on a pin," Fuyuhiko points out.

"It's a big pin," Chiaki replies. Watson woofs her approval.

Somehow, Fuyuhiko can hear Hajime sigh from across the room.

/

Here's the thing: Fuyuhiko does like Chiaki. He's happy that her and Hajime finally got over themselves and started dating. He's happy he knows her, is something that he'd think if he was feeling particularly cheesy.

She came by with flowers a few days after Hajime had brought him back.

"I got you some lilies because I didn't know what your favourite flower was," she had said.

"I don't have a favourite flower," he'd replied.

"Everyone has a favourite flower," she had said and thrust the lilies into his hands.

("It's daffodils," he'd muttered to her in The Pie Hole a week later.

She had grinned at him and he wondered how one person could feel so much like family even when they weren't.)

/

Peko stares at him sometimes and it worries him. She stares at him as though she isn't sure if he's really there, as though if she looks away then he'll disappear.

One day when Fuyuhiko drops in just before The Pie Hole shuts to drive Peko home and he finds her at her desk with her head in her hands.

"Peko?" he asks and shuts the office door behind him. Hajime is already packing outside and Fuyuhiko knows that he would leave with Nagito soon.

Peko doesn't answer but she does tilt her head up to look at him and he sees that the rims of her eyes are red.

Fuyuhiko blinks, stunned for a moment before he races around her desk and drops to his knees, one hand reaching for her hands, the other cupping her face. "Darling, what's wrong?"

She stares at him blankly and he feels worry freeze his veins. "Darling?" he asks, weakly. He thinks that Peko is the most important woman, no person, in his life and he thinks that she's the only one he's ever opened up to and he thinks that god he might just love her, and he thinks that she's scaring him.

"You were dead for three days," she says, without any emotion, staring at some point above his head and Fuyuhiko flinches. They never really talked about it. They dodged around the topic as much as they could. They had just tried to fit back into their regular lives as much as they could, and Fuyuhiko knew that at one point they would have to talk about it, but he would give anything for it not to be now. "You were dead for three days and I had to put you in the fuckin' tub with icy water and go to work." She looks him in the eyes suddenly and Fuyuhiko feels like he's drowning. "I talked to you. Do you remember it? Told you about my day, how Hajime was doing. He was so desperate to get out of the hospital, to bring you back. But he'd had a bullet in his collarbone, so he had to wait three days before they could release him. So, for three days, I had to act like everything was normal, that you were just sleeping back in my apartment like that time you got the measles, but you weren't, you were so pale, and I was so fucking _useless_ and I – "

Peko chokes on a sob and Fuyuhiko drops his hands to wrap his arms around her waist and slide her out of her chair and onto his lap. She cries into his chest, just above his heart and he shifts them so he's leaning against her desk.

Fuyuhiko wishes that he was Hajime because he always knows what to say to make everything ok. He settles for stroking her hair back and murmuring small promises.

He wonders, not for the first time, if everyone elses' lives would be better if he wasn't such a mess.

With Peko crying in his arms, he thinks that the answer is yes.

/

Here's the thing: Fuyuhiko and Peko have been dating for the past two years and he's still not sure how he managed to get so lucky.

He remembers how it had started. One day, Fuyuhiko had dropped by The Pie Hole to get Hajime to help him with a case but only Peko had been there, standing behind the counter and frowning at her laptop. He had thought she looked beautiful.

He had been about to turn and leave when she had spoken. "Do you think that daffodils would look nice in the centre of each of the tables?"

"Why're you asking me?" he had retorted and wanted to punch himself for being so rude.

She hadn't blinked and just kept staring at him with wildly intelligent eyes. "Because I value your opinion," she had replied.

A warmth had blossomed in his chest and before he could stop himself, he had said, "Only in the spring." And then he had walked out as quickly as he thought was socially accepted.

(A week later, he had left a daffodil on her desk and a week after that she had kissed him in a coffee shop.

He still doesn't know what she sees in him but, he just counts his blessings that he's got any time at all with her, even if he doesn't deserve it.)

/

There's a new case. Fuyuhiko reads over the file that a client had given him in his office as he makes his way over to The Pie Hole.

There isn't a lot. A woman stabbed fifteen times around the back of an abandoned bowling alley. The victim was aged twenty-four. Body was discovered by her friend who had gone looking for her.

Fuyuhiko walks into The Pie Hole and sees Hajime in the back, pushing a pie tin into the oven. Nagito and Mukuro are skating and walking respectively to serve customers. Kazuichi and Chiaki sit in front of the counter, Watson with her head resting on Chiaki's knees, Peko stood in front of them, smiling wryly at Kazuichi.

Everything feels the way it's supposed to. Of course, he can still remember the press of Peko's head against his chest as she had cried, the warmth of Kazuichi's body as he gave him a tight hug when he first came to The Pie Hole after everything, the lilies that were in a vase on Peko's windowsill.

But still, this feels familiar. This feels like home.

/

Here's the thing: nothing ever goes the way you mean it to. And Fuyuhiko should have learned this years ago.

/

author's note: ooooooooooooooo boy. the sequel is here. and it is SAD. idk if this is actually sadder than the first one but nevertheless angst is A Thing.

i dont think that this will have as much feel good moments as the last though i will try my best but its just. fuyuhiko is a very cynical narrator when compared to hajime who i tried to write more hopeful? idk but i do hope u like this!  
my tumblr is bravemccalll if u wanna tell me ur thoughts or just threaten to kill me for making our boy suffer. either is fine.  
until next time! - nic


	2. Chapter 2

chapter two – memories, memories

There are certain moments in Peko's life that she thinks are permanently scarred into her skin.

The last time she saw her mother; her flushed angry face, her mouth wide open as she screamed at her to never return.

The last letter she received from her father, begging her to come back.

(The first time Fuyuhiko kissed her, the taste of caramel and coffee on her tongue.

Seeing Hajime for the second time: her dressed to the nines, him dressed as though he had nothing he cared for anymore, both of them stranded and alone.)

Sometimes, Fuyuhiko stares at her, sadly, and she wonders if he can see it, her, all of her, etched into her bones.

She hopes not.

/

"What's your opinion on the species of the platypus?"

Peko stares at Kazuichi. "Why are you talking like that?"

He pushes his new pair of circular glasses up his nose and gazes at her gravely. "Because I have become…" He pauses for dramatic effect.

The moment stretches out. He's still staring at her in the eyes.

Chiaki leans across him to speak to Peko. "Do you want to have a sleepover at Hajime's on Saturday?"

"I think when you pass the age of twenty-five, you legally cannot call it a sleepover," Peko replies. Chiaki doesn't blink. "Sure," she sighs.

Chiaki smiles and slides back onto her stool. "Great! See Valentine's is on the Sunday, but we can just go our separate ways on that morning, ya know?"

Peko just nods. Chiaki loves group activities and Peko doesn't have the heart to ever decline any of her invitations.

"An intellectual!" Kazuichi announces.

"What are you talking about?" Peko asks. Kazuichi's face falls and she grins.

"I have become an intellectual," Kazuichi says. "Therefore, I must speak in riddles."

"You haven't said any riddles," Chiaki points out.

"Yeah, I don't know any," he replies.

Peko hates that she laughs.

/

Here's the thing: Peko remembers her mother's words more than anything.

 _You'll make nothing of yourself. And when you crash and burn, I won't allow you to crawl back, no matter how much you beg._

Hajime smiles at her with his whole body these days; she walks through the kitchen to her office and he grins at her, his shoulders relaxed, his hands open.

Chiaki slides her hard candies – always butterscotch, her favourite – whenever she thinks Peko looks sad.

Kazuichi offers to give her rocket launchers on her car. She mostly declines.

Nagito refills her mug before she even has to ask.

And Fuyuhiko is alive.

(She thinks she's done all right for herself, all things considered.)

/

It's February and it's still cold outside.

Fuyuhiko grumbles about it as he gets dressed for work.

"I don't get why it's still snowing," he says, shouldering on a duffle coat and reaching for his grey scarf. "It's _February._ "

Peko hums in response as she sits on the edge of their bed, pulling on her boots. Suddenly his face appears as he kneels in front of her, his hands coming to rest on her knees, his thumbs drawing light circles through her trousers. He raises an eyebrow. She stays silent.

"Darling, we talked about this," he sighs. She thinks he looks pretty in the morning. She thinks he always looks pretty, all light hair and intense eyes. She reaches a hand out and runs her own thumb over the crease in his brow until his frown disappears and then lays her palm on his cheek. He leans into the touch but still looks at her expectantly.

"Chiaki invited us for a sleepover on Saturday," she says.

His frown returns. "I don't think we can call it a sleepover at our age." Peko cracks a smile and his eyes light up briefly.

"That's what I said," she replies. A smile makes an appearance on his face before he goes back to staring at her intently.

"Are you going to tell me what going on in that head of yours?" Fuyuhiko asks.

Peko blinks at him. She doesn't know what to tell him. _I had to drag your lifeless body out of the sewers with my heart in my throat? I talked to you for three days, but you never replied?_

"Darling – "

"It's all been said," she interjects. He looks sad, still leaning into her hand. She strokes his cheekbone idly. "There's no need to go over it all again."

"If it'll make you feel better – "

"It won't," she says, firmly. His skin feels warm beneath her fingertips. She almost tells him that it all feels like a dream. That sometimes she's convinced that she was the one who died – her, with her cold, pale skin – and he's the one who agonised over it, who lifted her up and into the tub, who held her hand, tracing mindless patterns for hours on end. She could almost believe it with how heartbroken he looks, kneeling in front of her.

She leans down and presses a kiss to his forehead. She feels his cheek flush, but he still looks at her sadly when she pulls back. "We should get to work," she says. "Don't you have a new case?"

He nods. "I need to do some questioning with Hajime after work, but I'll be home before 9." And with that, he leans up and kisses her, a flash of warmth against her lips, and then he's gone.

Peko sits on the edge of her bed for a moment before she gets up to go to work as well.

/

Here's the thing: Peko remembers the first time she saw Fuyuhiko. He had been talking to Hajime outside The Pie Hole, both of their heads close together as they had a whispered argument.

Hajime had come in to grab his jacket and Peko had asked who was outside.

"A private investigator," he'd answered, rolling his eyes. "Kind of a dick but I guess we're working together now."

Peko had hummed as she looked out the window. Fuyuhiko had been leaning against a streetlamp, made up of dark angles and harsh light.

He looked like a dick, she supposed.

(A year later, she kissed him hard underneath that streetlamp before she headed into work.

"Fuyuhiko looks like he has a concussion," Hajime had said as he entered the kitchen. "Do you have any idea why?"

"Nope," she had replied. "Not a clue.")

/

Peko doesn't like Mukuro.

Not consciously. If she could decide to like her, she would. It would make going to work easier. Besides, she did seem nice, if just skittish; all wide eyes and hunched shoulders.

But Peko just can't. Because as much as she wants to forget it and move on, as much as Hajime tells her that she hadn't meant to pull the trigger, that it was just her finger clenching because she had gotten shot herself, she can't get over the fact that she had pointed a gun at Fuyuhiko and Hajime.

Whether or not she intended to actually pull the trigger, she still pointed a weapon at them.

Peko doesn't know if she can forgive that.

If the wide berth Mukuro gives her is any indication, she knows that as well.

Chiaki asks her about it, sliding the third butterscotch of the day over the counter towards her.

"Mukuro thinks you hate her," Chiaki says, her hands folded in front of her.

"I do hate her," Peko replies, popping the butterscotch into her mouth. She has a pile of paperwork on her desk, but she'll probably just stay late, same as Fuyuhiko. She doesn't think she can bare to deal with the absolute silence of being home alone.

Chiaki purses her lips. She grabs her fork and taps it against the side of her plate. "She's _trying_ , Peko."

"That's nice," says Peko.

"Peko," Chiaki snaps. Peko stares at her unflinchingly. Chiaki deflates quickly. She would be terrible as a lawyer Peko thinks. "She's doing her best but…she feels terrible because of how you're acting."

"She pointed a gun at my boyfriend and my oldest friend. She _killed_ my boyfriend," Peko hissed. "If she feels terrible then is that such a bad thing?"

Chiaki stares at her sombrely and for a moment, Peko is back in her apartment, Fuyuhiko on his knees, looking at her the exact same way. She shakes her head roughly and turns on her heel. "I'll be in my office," she says over her shoulder.

She supposes she'll just need to do her paperwork now.

/

"Can I ask you something?"

"Of course," Hajime answers immediately, the way he always does when she talks to him like this, bare and fragile. His hands are covered in flour. Peko stares at them.

"Do you…How have you forgiven Mukuro?"

Hajime blinks. He slowly chops an apple, thinking. "I don't really know. I mean when Chiaki first proposed that I bring her back, I didn't want to. I mean, she killed Tsumiki, Fuyuhiko and threatened me with a gun." He pauses, gathers up the apple slices and drops them in a bowl. "But, I don't know. She's genuine, Peko. She wants to do better. I just thought, who am I to stop her from doing that?"

Peko looks at her feet. "I don't think I can…just forget about it."

Hajime smiles at her. "You know that's ok, right? You don't have to forget what she did. I just try to focus on what she's doing now. She picks flowers on her way to work for in here." He gestures at the large window that's next to the back-entrance door. A yellow vase holds a few daffodils, a bluebell and a handful of daisies, all bound together with a piece of string. "She picks a lot of weeds but – " Hajime shrugs, "I don't have the heart to tell her."

Peko glances at him. "Do you trust her?"

"I'd like to," Hajime replies. "She's trying, so we're all trying as well." He slides her a box of cherries. She takes it with shaky hands. "I'll tell Chiaki to stop pestering you," he grins. "I think she just wants everyone to get along, so it upsets her when that isn't happening. I'll just to try to communicate the fact that we're not exactly the average group of friends."

Peko smiles at that and Hajime smiles back.

(Peko leaves Mukuro a cherry just before her shift ends.

It doesn't feel like forgiveness yet, but it's something.)

/

Here's the thing: Hajime is Peko's best friend. She loves him because of how natural their friendship is.

She remembers how she felt when they first opened The Pie Hole, a blackhole in her stomach that screamed how everything was going to collapse in on itself, how she was building a future on an unstable foundation.

She told Hajime this, a month into the job. They'd been sitting side by side, leaning against the wall of the kitchen.

"I know," Hajime had said. "I feel it too. Having something when you've had nothing is terrifying."

(Every year on the anniversary of The Pie Hole opening, August 15th, they still sit together against the wall and talk, an apple pie sat between them.

Peko thinks that it's one of her best traditions.)

/

There's an evidence board above their bed. Peko wonders why Fuyuhiko doesn't hang it up in his office or his own apartment that he never stays at, but she never asks.

When she finally gets home, she sees him sitting on the floor, sticking newspaper clippings onto the cork board with coloured pins.

He looks up at her, red string hanging from his mouth. "Darling," he greets, though it comes out muffled. He pulls the string out and gestures for her to come closer.

She drops her bag by her nightstand and sits next to him. "Is this for the new case?"

He nods. "Hajime didn't have time to come talk to the victim with me, so I just came home and started on this."

Peko looks at the board. At the top is the victim's name: AOI ASAHINA. There are multiple articles dotted around describing how she was stabbed and found in an abandoned bowling alley. At one side there's a piece of card with the word 'GIRLFRIEND?' written on it in Fuyuhiko's writing.

"I have a good feeling about this case, Peko. I don't know why I just do," Fuyuhiko says, turning to her with bright eyes.

She stares at him and thinks about how he brought her daffodils every Saturday on the run up to her birthday last year, thinks about the daffodils in the yellow vase in the kitchen.

"Alright," she says. "I trust your judgement." And kisses him.

/

author's note: it has been...so long.

i am so sorry, i have a showcase with eight plays to be performed in it coming up and literally everything that could go wrong, has. oh lord not even gonna get into it omg.  
anyway, hajime and peko's friendship means a lot to me, im sad.  
my tumblr is bravemccalll if u wanna yell at me which i accept.  
until next time! - nic


End file.
